


Close Your Eyes

by vajallie



Series: NejiTen Month 2019 [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, poisoned trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19837045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vajallie/pseuds/vajallie
Summary: Tenten is afraid that she's going to die. And despite Neji's unwillingness to admit his infatuation with her, he has to get the poison out somehow.





	Close Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Let's all believe that sucking out poison from the wound is viable.  
> 

“Are you done?” 

“Almost,” Tenten replies from behind the round trunk of Konoha’s emblematic giant trees. She is having difficulty trying to dress her wound adequately before continuing on back home. 

Seven days and eight nights traversing the shinobi land with Neji is horrible. Sometimes, Tenten thinks she’ll lose her voice if she doesn’t speak at all. And with Neji only speaking when giving orders and whatnot, Tenten thinks she could lose her voice and her sanity. She sucks in air through her teeth as she ties a knot directly on top of the wound on the left side of her chest. She had let her guard down.

.

.

Thirteen hours ago, Tenten was in the middle of bickering with herself. She was tired and her feet hurt. She wondered why she traded flat soles for blocky heels. She even wanted to trash her enormous scroll that’s taking a toll on her back. And then it happened, they were ambushed. Well, she was; not Neji of course. And they survived without a scratch, except her of course. 

Tenten didn’t think much about the shuriken lodging into her chest. She didn’t give it any second thought and threw it away the moment it pierced her. But as the hours flew by and she started to walk wonkily, where she’d drag her foot one after another as if she just ran 5,000 laps with Lee, Tenten began to suspect that pesky shuriken. 

“I think I’m poisoned,” Tenten recalled slurring the sentence outwards. Her tongue felt swollen and numb. Her palms were sweating tiny beads and her eyes were drooping. She tugged her collar and unbuttoned her shirt whilst they both continued to walk. Tenten didn’t remember Neji replying to her. She didn’t remember if he turned around when she told him that. All that she remembered was looking down to her wound. Her chin doubled up and her frown made an appearance. Her chest was red; her entire chest was flushed. And then she fell over her own two feet and hit the ground. 

.

.

Tenten slips on her blouse and buttons it up. She and Neji came to the conclusion minutes ago that she was indeed poisoned. He told her that her lips were turning purple and her skin was turning gray. And if Tenten wasn’t such an optimist, she would have cried for looking like a clown. 

Neji suggested that she should wash her wound behind the tree and keep it bandaged until they make it back to the village. And seeing that Tenten couldn’t really make decisions for herself now, as lethargy had overtaken her mind and will to think, Tenten complied. 

However long it took her to dress her wound, Tenten didn’t count. She did manage to keep track of the number of times Neji pestered her with his question, “Are you done?”

“Yes, I’m done,” Tenten answers back. She walks from the base of the tree with drunken feet. Tenten presents her dopey self to him, walking on what she believes is a straight path to him to retrieve her belongings back. 

Neji stares at Tenten veering towards the left with her head leading the way. He sighs and groans. She is evidently unfit to walk judging by her staggering stride. Neji quickly follows after her with her scroll weighing down his back and her backpack strapped to his chest. He grabs a hold of her sleeve and spins her around. It is at that moment that he notices that she only buttoned one button; it was mismatched. He holds her with discontent but a fraction of his heart jumps. “Get on my back. We have to get home before you die.”

Tenten did not have a choice. She didn’t want to make a choice anyway. With Neji guiding her arms over his shoulders, Tenten summons the last of her strength in her legs to hook them over her scroll. She hears him complain about her tugging on his hair but she is too comfortable to fish it from between their bodies. Tenten then rests her head on his shoulders. As she locks her arms in place, he scoops her legs to fully secure her. Tenten can definitely sleep right now. 

Midway through Neji’s bumpy ride as they fast-tracked towards Konoha through the tree branches (if she was capable of keeping track of where midway was), Tenten starts to feel extreme heat around her wound. And on cue, all nerves in her body numb and all muscles in her body relax. She completely slouches backward and causes Neji to lurch. He releases her in midair and manages to twist around just in time to prevent her body from crashing to the ground. “Tenten!” Neji shouts as he holds her fluid body in his arms. He lands back to the ground and leans her against a stump.

“Gah!” Tenten flashes her eyes open. Her reaction to falling is a bit late. She takes many slow and harsh breaths through her agape mouth. Her head is crooked, resting somewhat on her shoulder. Her lips have gone crusty and cold. “It’s burning me.” Tenten’s eyelids lower until her lashes blurry her vision of him. 

“What is?” Neji asks as he hastily straps off her backpack and scroll. 

“Gosh, I’m thirsty.”

Neji takes down his own bag as well. “Hold on,” he tells her. Neji pries his bag open and reaches for his water bottle. He could have given her her own bottle, but her bag isn’t easy to open. Neji unscrews the lid and softly presses the rim to her, now blue lips. Tenten gulps only a tiny bit before choking on the substance. Water trickles out of her mouth and wets her blouse. Neji immediately removes the bottle from her and wipes the spill with his sleeve. He is more than worried now. “What’s wrong? Tell me what-”

“I’m gonna die,” Tenten’s chest heave. Her lungs wheeze with every breath intake. 

“No, you’re not-”

“I’m gonna die-”

Neji discards his bottle and captures her face into his hands. He tries to find her gaze, “No, you’re not going to die.”

Tenten’s vision can’t even focus on him, “I can’t feel anything but fire on my chest. I won’t make it.”

Neji wishes the calmness he always exudes can come to him at this instant. He does not want to panic but every inch in his body is trembling on their own. “Listen to me, you will make it.” He’s not even sure if he can believe in these words.

“Even now, you’re still all talk,” Tenten closes her eyes to rest them. Looking at anything is making her head spin.

“No, look at me,” Neji demands. “Tenten, look at me.” His quivering hands shake her pale cheeks. She is not responding to him. “You can’t leave me like this. We are so close to home.”

Tenten drowns out his words and holds her breath in an attempt to minimize the burning sensation on her laceration. It's didn't really work.

Neji fully panics, mistaking her breath spell as one of her lasts. His hands scramble to unbutton that mismatched button. “Please forgive me,” Neji rips her blouse open and shimmies it halfway down her shoulders. This sudden exposure causes Tenten to gasp. She hadn’t even the chance to speak, “We left as two and we will return as two,” Neji rushes his words as he begins to undo her poorly bandaged wound. 

“You're not gonna,” Tenten whispers just as he exposes the bloody injury. She is scared, feeling vulnerable in his rampaging attempt to save her life. 

“If it’s for you, I will,” Move the gauze any lower and he’d expose her breasts. Neji stares at the inch-long slit at the side of her chest. The blood coagulating near and on it is pitch black with remnants of red. He keeps his hands squeezed at her arms. His knuckles bear the color white. He is afraid to lose her. 

Neji smashes his lips onto the wound and begins to extract the concentrated poison from her chest. He shuts his eyes closed, hearing her groan, whimper and moan. Neji draws back with a mouthful of bitter blood. He spits it aside and returns to her skin. His heart is beating erratically. Neji doesn’t want to think about what he’s doing. He only wants to feel it. From the bitter taste of her tainted blood to her soft skin that he’s sucking, to her toned shoulders from which he has an iron hold of, or to the noises she’s making, although it shouldn’t have to be this way, Neji gives in to temptation.

It is the temptation to show his hidden desire for her, something he has kept secretly to himself for a long time. And damn Neji for being so well at it. Keeping his interactions with her to a minimum all these years has helped him contain all of these unsaid and untraversed feelings from ever spilling out. But with this moment spent trying to preserve her life, somehow with his lips on her skin for the worst reason of them all, Neji is sure now that he can never hold these feelings at bay. 

.

.

Tenten closes her eyes. She opens them again. The cycle repeats several times until her eyes got used to the blinding light from the hospital window. Tenten squints, confirming that this is indeed Konoha’s hospital and not some heavenly purgatory. She’s made it home alive. 

In trying to jog her memories of what exactly happened after she climbed onto Neji’s back, Tenten’s cheeks begin to blush up. She’s not sure if the image of him exposing her bare is actually just a dream or if it occurred or if it’s just another strong imagination that has somehow leaked into her memories. Tenten sits up, feeling less fragile than the last time she remembered being conscious. She’s lived because of Neji. She should definitely thank him after obtaining her belongings. Perhaps wait it out for a week or two. 

Tenten is almost sure that the vivid scene with Neji extracting the poison was real. Again, extreme heat pools in her ears and onto her cheeks. She has no right to salivate over a mere fantasy even if she’s almost sure that it happened. Tenten hops off the bed and walks to the heavy door. She slides it and peeks out. There is a woman at the desk. The area is calm. Few people dutifully roam about. She approaches the woman to make an inquiry as to where her personal items are.

She snagged two birds with a stone. Tenten stands outside of the Hyuuga compound in broad daylight. Her feet are bare and she had to improvise tying her locks up into her signature buns with the ripped hem of her hospital gown. She was told that Neji took her belongings and here she is waiting for him to appear from those blue curtains. She really doesn't have to stall thanking him now, and she'll be able to get her items back. Tenten doesn’t want to be overwhelmed with her imaginations, for she now is confident that there is a 75% chance that it did happen, but she can’t wrap her head around how this callous man would go through such embarrassing lengths to preserve her life. The more she stands and idly wait, the clearer the memory becomes. Tenten swears she can almost feel his touch, although she knows that it's bogus. 

Tenten watches as Neji exits the curtains with her backpack strapped onto one shoulder and her scroll on the other, Tenten immediately hides her hands behind her back. The habit of her fingers trembling whenever she’s nervous spontaneously arrives. And if Neji saw it, he’d know exactly how she’s feeling. He approaches her step after step, and for a moment Tenten swears there were more sparks in the sky than on festival nights. “H-hey, thanks for safekeeping my stuff.”

Neji hands her the backpack first and settles the heavy scroll to stand on the ground, “Can you carry them back home?”

“Y-yeah.” Tenten couldn’t find the courage to make eye contact with him an entire meter from her. She enters a minor wrestle with her backpack to put it on and keeps her orbs low to where her scroll stands; his hand is on top of it, stabilizing it from toppling down. “Thanks.”

Tenten manages to retrieve her scroll without grazing his fingers. She’s unsure whether she’ll be bold enough to do so anyway. Tenten brings the scroll to her side but she doesn’t leave. It is as if her feet are nailed to the ground. She wants to ask him, to confirm if her memory of them are real.

.

.

Neji’s feet don’t want to move despite his brain yelling at them to do so. He can admit it now that his simple attraction to his teammate has become more than that. He wants it to become more than that. The old feelings of shame for being enamored with her are shedding in this very instance that he looks at her. From her adamance to regain her signature hair by destroying hospital property and to her persistence in trying to fool him into thinking that she’d be able to carry her belongings back home, Neji finds the cold barrier of ice surrounding his heart completely shattering into water. 

If only it was easy for him to physically show her what his heart is doing, he would have closed their distances a long time ago. Neji’s frozen body begins to warm. The first is his lips, “I can help you carry these back home if you don’t mind.”

Tenten’s mind is too preoccupied with how she should deliver her question to him that she completely dismisses him, “No thanks. I’ve got it.” She definitely does not “got it”. Earlier, she struggled to even sling her backpack over her shoulder. Tenten grips the thick scroll rod tightly. She completely discards her question altogether. “I should leave now.” Tenten’s eyes flicker up to meet his onyx orbs. She’s never seen such vibrancy coming from his, then pale, eyes. And without missing a beat, as if she was enchanted by his eyes and pressed to say it, she chokes the words out despite abandoning them seconds earlier, “Was that!” His eyes widen by the millimeters and Tenten’s cheeks gush with every shade of red possible. “Was that— did you really? To me?" She is perplexed, "Was it just a dream? That you-”

“It’s a dream,” Neji responds calmly in juxtaposition to her riled barrage of incoherent questions. But against all of that, he understood exactly what she’s asking. 

Tenten blinks once, but it feels as though she’s closed her eyes for an hour to dissect his answer. Of course, his reply is so representative of him. “Right! I didn’t think that- you’d- actually-”

“Close your eyes,” Neji tells her. The urge to put his lips on her's strengthen with every second that she stares at him. 

“Hm?” Tenten stares at him in bewilderment. 

“Close your eyes.”

Tenten’s heart is running a marathon with Lee. She is now 95% percent sure that it did happen. Tenten does as she’s told, feeling more than anxious as to what he’s going to do. Will he fly off? Poof away? Or will he kiss her anywhere? Or flick her forehead now that she’s not wearing the protective headband? Her mind is traversing through all the things she’d daydreamed he’d do if he’d return the feelings. Her hopes shoot up and then crashes down to reality in an instant. It will do her no good to hope too high. 

When she felt his arms coveting her, when his body attached to her’s, Tenten’s eyelids fling open. His chin is hooked over her narrow shoulder and he’s gripping her so close to him. _In broad daylight._

The heavy scroll tips over and slams onto the ground loudly with a ‘thunk’. Neji can already feel intrigued eyes lasering to their way. “Won’t you reciprocate?” he draws his mouth to her ear and whispers. “Onlookers will think you’ve rejected me.”

Tenten’s hands immediately bounce from her sides to his tiny waist. She couldn’t say a word at all. Her defenseless heart has just been acknowledged and claimed. 

Neji hasn’t really thought about the consequences of loving someone. No matter how more vulnerable either of them would be if death lies upon them, he knows he’d never regret this decision. "Let's date even if it's inconsequential. I just want to hold your hand confidently unlike before."

* * *


End file.
